Day 6: Traveling with the First Lady of Peru

This will be a day to remember. Woke up at 2:30 AM to catch a 5:00 AM flight to Trujillo. We met the First Lady of Peru, Pilar Nores, at the airport. We traveled several hours east into the Andes ascending curved, yet paved roads for the first 45 minutes, then extremely rugged and single-laned unpaved roads for the remainder of the ascent. At one stopping point, we were at 4,700 meters, higher than Mount Rainer in Washington. We eventually descended downward into a village center with an altitude of 3,800 meters, where we witnessed the incredible not-for-profit program that First Lady Pilar Nores is responsible for creating and maintaining.

Project Sembrando aims to offer a better quality of life to folks living high in the Andes who don’t have even the basic necessities of life. The program offers food, medical care, education in self-care and self-esteem, builds hygienic facilities and teaches how to prepare and cultivate food hygienically. It also brings together communities by requiring a certain presence at community meetings in order to receive the sustenance and important information. Today, we saw four communities, with a total of approximately 200 families gathered together, each proudly standing behind their community flag, waiting to learn what was to be presented to them this day. Pilar Nores gave an impassioned, articulate speech, explaining what was to happen today and the logistics of how it would happen. Families lined up to receive packages of powdered milk with supplements, many home care products, vitamins, and each family member took a pill for intestinal parasites. Liuva Horruitiner, a pediatric dentist from Lima who accompanied us, explained the importance of toothbrushing to the children. With Pilar Nores standing next to her animating, Dr. Horruitiner demonstrated the proper toothbrushing method.

I had the chance to examine the mouths and teeth of many children and quickly realized the high prevalence of dental caries in this population. One could be nothing but awe-inspired by the passion, the organization and the results achieved by all aspects of this incredible program, which is growing all around the high altitude regions of the Andes. We have already had preliminary discussions of how our Early Childhood Oral Health (ECOH) program might lead to significant oral health solutions within Project Sembrando, by utilizing its mission of developing local solutions and delivering them to distant sites. This amazing day is not over; there will be a lot more to this story, I am sure.